Anyone who is a pastor will most likely have been appointed for one of two fundamental reasons. Either they will be regarded as a decent preacher and teacher of the Bible or they will have been viewed as particularly pastorally gifted. They will either be seen as good at handling the Word or good at handling people. You occasionally get that rare animal who is very good at both, you sometimes find a strange beast who isn’t great shakes at either. But typically, you either appointed – as most the people in your church judge[d] it [at least at one point in time] – a good bible teacher or a pastorally gifted people person.
The problem with being appointed for some skill or other – whatever that may be – is it is particularly easy to start relying on those God-given abilities in a fairly naturalistic sort of way. If one was appointed to their role as a great preacher, for example, it isn’t hard to see how the skills one has developed may become what we rely on. If you can bash out sermons because that fits your skill set and it is what you have been trained to do and it now feels like second nature, reliance on the Lord expressed through prayer is likely to become a formality or feel significantly less necessary.
The same is true for the one who is pastorally gifted. If you know, by nature and giftedness, you are a people person who has the skills necessary to handle pretty complex pastoral situations with aplomb, the more you do it, the more it will feel like you’ve simply got it down. The more it just feels like something you are able to do because it’s within your abilities, the less it will feel like you need to pray so much about going into tricky pastoral situations. If you feel you’ve got this, you are likely to feel less of a need to rely upon the Lord as you go into it.
The reverse is obviously true too. If I know I’m not the world’s greatest preacher, and think of myself as a barely passable one, the chances are I am likely to be a bit more prayerful about whatever it is I am taking into the pulpit each week. I will have a real sense of the need of the Spirit to be at work because I know my sermons and preaching ability probably aren’t going to be doing much of themselves. Likewise, if I don’t sense I am the world’s most gifted people person, the chances are I am going to be praying that extra bit harder when I am walking into difficult pastoral situations, or indeed, fairly run of the mill ones. If I feel that lack within myself, I am going to feel my need to rely on the Lord more keenly.
I think those things are fairly obvious and evident. We pray more when we feel unable; we pray less when we think we’ve got the resources at our disposal to achieve decent results on our own. One might think, then, that the answer to our prayerlessness is to cultivate a sense of being particularly rubbish at everything in order to convince ourselves to pray more. Even if we happen to be the next C.H. Spurgeon, we kind of pretend we’re not so we’ll pray more. Even if we are the most pastorally able of pastors, we have to develop a false humility and pretend we’re rubbish if we’re going to pray. But even saying that out loud, we can see that is a nonsense that will neither work – because we’ll know it isn’t true really – nor does it address the heart of the problem.
Rather than create a false sense of lack that isn’t real, we are better looking at what Jesus said. He doesn’t tell all preachers they’re really actually rubbish and better ask him for help. Rather, in John 3, he is clear that even the world’s greatest preacher isn’t going to see any fruit is the Spirit isn’t blowing. That is, you don’t have to pretend you’re a rubbish preacher when you’re not, you just have to realise that you could preach the most objectively fine sermon the world has ever heard and still achieve nothing because there is a part of the work that is above our pay grade. The same is true for our pastoral work too. Jesus was not lying when he said, ‘apart from me, you can do nothing’ (John 15:5). It’s not that you aren’t gifted, or that you don’t have skills, it’s that there are simply bits beyond what Jesus calls us to do that he specifically hasn’t called us to do because we can’t do them and it requires him to do in order to make any of what we might do actually accomplish anything at all.
When we realise that, we might pray a bit more. It’s not that our preaching isn’t very good really. It’s not that our pastoral skills are non-existent. It’s that the work God has called us to do – preach the Word and care for the sheep – that is within our grasp requires the Spirit to be at work to cause those things to bear any fruit. Jesus hasn’t given us the job of changing people’s hearts, causing conversions and catylising spiritual growth because they are all beyond us. He has called us to preach the Word and love the sheep, and he is pleased to use those as means he might work through to accomplish these things, but they are not a result of our work but his. The finest preacher and the greatest pastor can rightly affirm their real skill set, but they must also affirm that it is the Lord Jesus who will make those things accomplish anything in the end.
We don’t have to have a false humility about what God has gifted us to do. We can recognise our skills and abilities ultimately come from him, but we can rightly recognise them where they exist. But we can be prayerful – even with our personal abilities – because apart from the Spirit moving, those things are of no value. That is why we shouldn’t let our giftedness lead to prayerlessness. Apart from him doing the work that only he can do, our work is in vain.